Mary Hodgkinson, this year’s Clay Shoot Coordinator, has been doing great work with coordination meetings as well as behind the scenes. She has commitments from Hayden Gregg to take charge of steak preparations, Sally Covacevich to run the food line, Jack Whitmire to do the administrative work, Bobby Leon to supervise field operations, Julia Lee to schedule members to work on the days of the event, and Bruce Woods to do the grounds work as he did last year. Mary, herself, with help from Gerald Parker, Neal Stevenson, and Bob Martin will be in charge of the solicitations. Like in years past, the Boys & Girls Club will be in charge of the auction and raffle. Mark your calendars for the last weekend in April—the 24th & 25th—so you will be available.

There have been two coordination meetings, one in July and another in September. There we decided to send out postcard reminders before the United Way blackout period. The postcards generated the first check from Cole, Cole and Easley and a substantial commitment from Ruth Constant.

During the blackout period we are going to work on our solicitation list and letters. Also, we would like commitments from members to write a personal note on a significant number of the solicitation letters. These will be posted around November 15. The rewrite of the solicitation letter is complete. The plan is to have these to members early, so they can be personalized and mailed on the deadline. We decided to continue with the format of prior years—Boys & Girls Club youth activities, shooter registration, shooter practice, steak dinner, and auctions on Saturday and the shoot on Sunday. The next coordination meeting is scheduled November 13 at the Feedlot Steakhouse.

Club members will receive their materials for buying sponsorships in their bills the first week in January. If you have been a sponsor in the past, you can expect to be included in the November mailing.

The goal this year is to break the $40,000 mark with our sponsorships. This has been an elusive goal for the past two years. Tim Braaten had a goal of $10,000 for the auction last year—we were close, but no cigar. Try to bring some big spenders to the dinner and auction, so we can do it this year.▲

The Rotary year has begun with a lot of excitement. First was the unveiling of the Victoria Rotary Club Historian and Orientation DVD. This project was envisioned last year by Cally and from all comments was well received. Thanks to Cally's inspiration we now have a method of capturing each year's activities for historical archiving and a way to educate future Rotarians when joining our club.

For those of you who have not seen the DVD....you should have been there!! If you would like to have a copy to share with your family when they ask..."What does Dad/Mom do in Rotary?"...please contact me for a copy.

To really get things going we had the first (and hopefully only) Victoria Rotary Club Hurricane Party. Yes...when everyone else is running for cover we had almost 20 die hard Rotarians show up for our club meeting while Hurricane Claudette was visiting our fair city. Now I know what you're thinking...ARE THEY CRAZY...no, we just worried more about having to do a make-up than if we're safe. Actually we all assumed that Claudette would be another 12 to 18 hours away. We had an excellent program given by Donald Day on the opportune topic of what kind of glass to buy when replacing a window in your home. (I think Donald was not too disappointed that the winds picked up during the meeting). I hope the rest of you took the opportunity to make-up on Thursday at Northside Rotary's Tornado Party!!

One final thing to say...We have a very important and special event coming up in April....Yes the Annual Victoria Rotary/Boys and Girls Club Clay Shoot!! We will begin soon with our planning committee and making efforts to raise the funds needed to support our community projects. We will have the full year to raise donations that will be fully tax-deductible because our Victoria Rotary Foundation is now in place. If you know of a business that would support our efforts if the donation was fully tax deductible, now would be a good time to talk to them and have them put us on their yearly donations list. Let's make this Clay Shoot another successful event. ▲

Party party party Topsy Spellmann

Halloween is near and Rotary wants to make it clear….we want you to come and celebrate at the YMCA on Saturday, October 11, 2003 from 6-9 PM. Following the guidelines from Rotary International which made this the year of the family and asked that we include the entire family in our fellowship activities, we have planned a Halloween Party that includes the entire family. There will be games and activities for everyone from little children to adults. We are asking that the entire family come dressed alike in outfits from their closets. If the Rotarian has a hard time thinking of outfits, perhaps you could ask the children to come up with ideas. Cowboys, punk rockers, hobos, executives, medical personnel, nursery rhyme characters…..use your imagination and be creative and lets make this a really fun party. The YMCA is helping and providing employees to man activities for us at no cost. Food, fun and frolic is free…..The Fellowship Committee is trying very hard to make this year an enjoyable, entertaining, and enlightening year and we ask that you join us and be a part of year of fun. Come sporting a smile and plan to have fun. Pictures will be taken and provided to families as a remembrance of their good time and the many laughs that we will have. See you there!▲

Dave Sheffield, a member of our club who lives in Rockport, celebrated 50 years as a Rotarian this past June. He joined the Victoria Rotary Club in June 1953. Dave, a retired banker, celebrated by donating $1,000 to the Rotary Foundation. The next time he is in town on a Tuesday and can make a meeting, we will present his Paul Harris pin updated with a sapphire.▲

Everyone loves a mystery Topsy Spellmann

CSI, The New Detectives, Law and Order, Cold Case Files……Everyone is wanting to be surprised and entertained by new and interesting mysteries and our Rotary Club is no exception. With our new “Mystery Rotarian” program, we are learning more about our fellow Rotarians than we could ever imagine.

Ken Nathan has been a “Jail Bird”, Wayne Alexander has been bitten by bats. (This may explain a lot of things we were wondering about Wayne.) Bob Zawadzki provided protection for President Eisenhower while he was in office.

We handed out surveys to our fellow Rotarians and asked that they answer a group of questions phrased to learn information we might never have known about everyone. Then we selected a “Mystery Rotarian” and gave out his or her questions and their answers. As the “mystery” progresses, club members have been asked to try to guess the name of the “Mystery Rotarian” and by guessing correctly, winning a prize.

The Fellowship Committee will keep working to entertain and enlighten everyone. We hope that the club is enjoying this program as much as we are putting in on. ▲

Three join Victoria Rotary Club in the summer quarter